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The United Kingdom has announced the country’s first entirely British fighter in decades. The new Tempest fighter project will primarily involve British defense contractors, forging a plane that could be used for domestic use and export. The British government says the fighter should be ready for service by 2035.U.K. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson introduced a full-sized model of the new Tempest multi-role fighter today at the Farnborough Air Show. The Tempest incorporates a host of new technologies that would surpass what’s in the F-35, meaning the British plane would join the growing group of “sixth-generation” fighters now on the drawing board....

(Image: Concept art of the NASA InSight launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.)Update May 5, 8:45 a.m. EDT: United Launch Alliance successfully launched the InSight lander early this morning from a foggy California coast, sending it on its way to Mars. Both the primary spacecraft as well as the two Mars Cube One small satellites were lifted by an Atlas V rocket before successfully separating from the rocket’s Centaur second stage to begin their six-month flight to Mars, with a currently planned landing date of November 26....

The Navy ushered in the railgun future way back in 2012 with the first shots of its electromagnetic cannon. But although the concept has been proven and the cannon is functional, its road to deployment has been a bit rocky. Between enormous energy requirements, and non-explosive shells that offer limited in-air guidance, electromagnetic weapons are proving a bit unpractical compared to some of the conventional alternatives. At least for now. But that hasn’t stopped the Navy from pressing on with the research, and this recently released video of a test fire from November 2016 shows cannon just blasting away with astonishing ferocity, and from any angle you could ever want: [youtube ]https://www....

For years engineers have been trying to copy the gravity-defying feet of the gecko, which enable the small lizards to scurry across ceilings and up walls with ease. Tiny toe hairs help to keep a gecko stuck like glue to a surface, but they come right off without leaving a trace, and they’re self-cleaning, able to avoid picking up dirt and debris.But instead of going to all the trouble of reengineering all this, a team in South Korea came up with a new method: just use the geckos’ real feet....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe vehicle that kicked off Buick’s design overhaul has been moderately refreshed. For 2013, the Enclave’s exterior will receive a new front fascia with LED daytime running lamps and a new headlamp design with LED accents. The luxury crossover’s hood has also been restyled and slightly lowered, and there’s a new black chrome waterfall grille. The rear fascia has seen similar updates with a new design, LED taillamps, and integrated chrome accent exhaust tips....

Currently, there are over 13,000 yellow taxis operating in New York City. But how many of those taxis are actually necessary? Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory decided to find out, and developed an algorithm to service nearly all taxi passengers with only a small fraction of the fleet.Their system uses ridesharing, commonly found in alternative taxi services like Uber and Lyft. When using these services, you can choose to share a ride with a stranger if both of you are travelling on the same route....

A new species of carnivorous dinosaur, called Allosaurus jimmadseni, has been described in a new paper published today in the open-access scientific journal PeerJ.A. jimmadseni came 5 million years before its better-known cousin, Allosaurus fragilis. It’s possible that the latter did evolve from A. jimmadseni.Scientists first discovered the fossil in the early 1990s, but years of excavation work and a painstaking research process kept A. jimmadseni from being officially classified until now....

The drinking bird is an iconic desk toy, right up there with Newton’s Cradle, but can you explain how it works? The principle is unintuitive at first glance, but beautifully simple in hindsight, like only the most mesmerizing bits of engineering are. At its core, the drinking bird is a heat engine, not that unlike a steam turbine or diesel engine. When the birds head dips in the water, it gets wet....

You no longer need to break the bank to land yourself an amazing pair of headphones or earbuds. These best-selling headphones and earbuds are all available at a fraction of their usual cost, thanks to limited-time Black Friday pricing.REVEL True Wireless Earbuds Stack$80 (over 45 percent off)BUY NOWDon’t let their incredibly small size fool you. These tiny buds feature Bluetooth 5.0 technology and a completely sweat-proof design—making them ideal for workouts....

Media Platforms Design Team(All Photos Courtesy of Belkin)If you can’t get out of bed without a fresh cup of java, then your coffee maker has arrived. With this new programmable, Wi-Fi-enabled Mr. Coffee, you can make your joe from bed.The Mr. Coffee 10-Cup Smart Optimal Brew Coffeemaker with WeMo ($150) connects to your smartphone via the WeMo app, where users can set brewing times for the coming weeks. It also lets you know when the water is empty or you need to clean out the filter....

Last weekend’s terrifying false apocalypse alarm in Hawaii was, to some degree, the product of some bad interface design. Honolulu Civil Beat obtained a photo of the window where one employee accidentally selected the option to send a real missile alert instead of running an internal test. After you see how it looks, it’s a little harder to blame them. I mean, can you find the right answer at a glance?...

Media Platforms Design TeamChecking your oil is simple enough–until you attempt to open the hood. You try the remote release, but it seems a little hard to pull. Yank harder, and the familiar clunk of the hood popping up until the safety latch stops it doesn’t happen. Your hood release is stuck. The dipstick will have to wait.OPEN SESAMEActually, it may not be your hood. Many vehicles in this security-conscious age have remote releases for the trunk, tailgate and even the fuel-filler door....

Today, drones are typically flown with a controler, but Swiss researchers at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) now claim they have a better way: using the human body.The EPFL scientists have designed a system which uses the human torso to control a drone as opposed to using a joystick. This would leave a person’s head free to look around, “much like a bird,” the EPFL notes in a press release....

Media Platforms Design TeamI’m tempted to buy one of the new 4K TVs, but I know there’s not much 4K content. How will standard and hi- def video look on one of these sets?Frankly, 4K-TV pictures are beautiful. Also called UltraHD, or UHD, 4K televisions have a resolution of 4096 x 2160 pixels; HD is 1920 x 1080 pixels. As you point out, though, barely anyone shoots movies or TV shows at 4K resolution....

Media Platforms Design TeamThis week at the annual All Things Digital conference—a geekfest of high-roller proportions—Microsoft brass followed up by showing off the capabilities of Windows 7, the operating system that will succeed Windows Vista by the end of next year. Much of the early buzz comes from the OS’s multitouch interface, with the early demo reminding us of the hands-on functionality we’ve been following from the to to the (and ) Surface—and , of course....

Media Platforms Design TeamPicking a FightIn short, the dispute between President Truman and Gen. MacArthur was more substantive than what we saw between President Obama and Gen. McChrystal. During the Korean War, after the Chinese invaded Korea to force advancing United Nations troops away from its border, MacArthur agitated in public to attack the Chinese mainland. Truman refused to entertain the idea of a wider war, or the use of nuclear weapons....

Good-guy hacker Samy Kamkar—he of the automatic Master Lock cracker and the garage door-opening kid’s toy—has a new trick up his sleeve. It’s a small black box that, when hidden on a car with GM’s OnStar RemoteLink technology, can track, unlock, and even start the car from any smartphone. The process is a simple man-in-the-middle attack. Once an attacker puts the box—which Kamkar calls OwnStar—on a target car, the box waits for the car’s owner to use the legitimate OnStar smartphone app to access the car....

Researchers at the University of Southern California have been trying to make a material that doesn’t respond to heat, and it seems they’re getting close. If they’re able to create this sci-fi-like unobtanium, it could have big applications in construction and engineering.Most materials expand when they’re heated, which can be a huge engineering challenge. Large structures like bridges and buildings need to have expansion joints built in that allow the structure to expand safely without suffering damage....

Media Platforms Design TeamRecently, Rosie O’Donnell, a co-host of ABC talk show The View, made comments on the show that renewed controversy over the collapse of World Trade Center 7.While saying she didn’t know what to believe about the U.S. government’s involvement in the attacks of Sept. 11, she said, “I do believe that it’s the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics that World Trade Center tower 7—building 7, which collapsed in on itself—it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved....

A team of scientists have calculated how long it would take four operating spacecraft to reach the nearest star. The researchers compared the predicted paths of four spacecraft to the paths of nearby stars, as measured by the Gaia space telescope, to see where and when they might overlap. According to their work, posted to the online pre-print server arXiv, it would take about 90,000 years for Pioneer 10 to swing within striking distance of a nearby star....